Through Gates of Splendor

I.Introduction Through Gates of Splendor, by Abe C. Van Der Puy, is a Christian classic. It is about five daring missionaries who were willing to risk their lives just to spread the gospel to the isolated Aucas. They even financed this mission from their own pockets. They knew that their lives will be in danger, and they still have their families, but they trusted God and still continued their strong desire in life to spread the gospel to the Aucas. It is clearly evident that their lives were not wasted. Many college students volunteered to enter the foreign–mission field, and more Indians came to church in Shandai.

II.BodyIn the autumn of 1955, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Jim Elliot had dared to make contact with a Stone Age tribe deep in the jungles of Ecuador. Their goal is to establish a communication with people whose only previous response to the outside world had been to attack all strangers. The men’s mission combined modern technology with innate ingenuity, sparked by a passionate determination to get the gospel to people without Christ. Only the five members of the team and their wives knew about this mission. They financed the project from their own pockets, because if word of the operation gets abroad, the Indians might attack and kill the people and ruin their plans. They also devised code terms to insure further secrecy: the Aucas, “the neighbors”; the Auca settlement, “Terminal City”; and the beach where the missionaries would land and set up the contact camp, “Palm Beach.” They started to make contact with the Aucas by dropping and sending down machetes, a ten-inch aluminum kettle filled with ribbons, trinkets, shirts, a live rooster, small packages of food, and other gifts, which the Aucas received with great excitement. They even shouted Auca phrases of welcome. The Aucas, in return, gave beautifully woven headbands made of cord and brightly colored feathers, sets of combs made...